Feeder Bus Routes Generation within Integrated Mass Transit Planning Framework

This paper discusses a model for developing optimal feeder bus routes, within integrated mass transit planning framework, for urban rail transit stations. The model is a part of the methodology to develop an effective and efficient integrated urban mass transit system for a city which has a potential demand for a new rail-based mass transit system besides the street transit system and existing rail-based system (if any). In addition to the proposed model the methodology consists of rail transit corridor identification and integrated scheduling models, but they are not within the scope of this paper. The routes are generated in two levels; the first level generates the initial set of shortest paths (potential feeder routes) based on the maximum and minimum route length criteria, and in the second level, a search is made around these corridors by generating $K$ shortest paths for each station-to-terminal node pair (potential feeder route) and using genetic algorithm to select one route combination out of all possible routing configurations. The feeder routes were developed for two different cases: Case 1 for selective search and Case 2 for open search, and the best results out of the two were adopted. Thane City, which is a part of Mumbai Metropolitan Region, India, is taken as the case study area. It was found that better results in terms of minimized objective function value were obtained for the open search case. The proposed model is able to develop optimal feeder routes, within integrated mass transit planning framework.